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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29291910">and still I will live here</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/clytemnestras/pseuds/clytemnestras'>clytemnestras</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>fem feb 2021 [7]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Old Guard (Movie 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Battle Couple, Cooking, F/F, Femslash February, Femslash February 2021, Found Family, Sparring, Tending Wounds</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 01:48:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,558</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29291910</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/clytemnestras/pseuds/clytemnestras</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>There’s no history to Nile’s hands, digging out the bullet, rubbing the rawness down.</i>
</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Nile Freeman</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>fem feb 2021 [7]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2132580</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>44</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>femslash february music fest</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>and still I will live here</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElasticElla/gifts">ElasticElla</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I combined 2 prompts, <a href="https://clockwork-hart1.dreamwidth.org/53291.html?posted=1&amp;style=site&amp;view=1146667#cmt1146667">this at the ficathon: </a><br/><i>there's no such thing as unknowing<br/>only forgetting,<br/>and that doesn't always stick</i></p><p>&amp; for the femfeb music fest, a song that came out in 2020</p><p><i>I have seen your body<br/>And I have seen your beauty<br/>They are separate things</i><br/>Roses/Lotus/Violet/Iris, Hayley Williams ft Boygenius</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Nile has seen enough active combat to be comfortable tending a wound, even after hers have stopped needing much care. The boys do it too, lovingly, curving around Andy’s wounds to stem the bleeding, Nicky a little too gently, Joe a touch too rough, like a defiance, <em> don’t you dare. </em></p><p>There’s a difference, though, when it’s Nile’s hands. Andy grits her teeth a little less. Winces a little more. She’s not innocent enough to believe its feminine tenderness, knowing well the past curled up into <em> AndyNickyJoe </em>, closer than blood. Nile knows it’s a bravado with the boys, Andy will never go gentle but she can’t let the steel go, either.</p><p>There’s no history to Nile’s hands, digging out the bullet, rubbing the rawness down. It’s easier to scream for her, into the anonymity. Andy’s body is all hard muscle, all tough and world-worn. Nile thinks about Dizzy’s hands curled around her throat, trying to stem the flow of her as she unravelled for the first time. Trying to press the life back in. Andy’s blood swells over her hands, and Nile holds her body together. </p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>She’s always fought smart, that’s obvious. Why die when you don’t need to, just because you can get back up? Death slows you down even if it doesn’t stop you.</p><p>So Andy’s style hasn’t changed much, disarm and debilitate, hard and fast. Nile doesn’t miss the slight curve to her mouth, even when her teeth grit, mid-battle, snapping a man’s humorous and swiping the gun. She thrives in it, powered by the fight, the spark in her eye a little brighter with each swing of the axe. Nile watches her too closely, falls into step, the two of them feeding the other's fire.</p><p>When it's over, when no one in the room is getting up, Joe looks at the two of them, leaning on each other, panting for breath, and opens his mouth to say something, but Nicky touches his cheek, smearing it with red. He kisses the words off of his mouth, and Nile stares at the floor until the pattern blurs her vision, Andy breathing warmly across her throat.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>Every day is war, and that’s fine, Nile knows war, Nile wears war intimately, in the blood and on the skin. She’s learning the difference, though, between a war fought over lines in the sand, the one her dad died for, one hand nudging her forward, and this, war fought for righteousness’ sake. She can more easily place the morality, when the only higher up is her gut, or Andy’s gaze heavy upon her spine and not a delicately shifting political compass she had to grit her teeth to rationalise. </p><p>They kill who would kill them, kill who would do worse, nudge humanity in the right direction when someone with eyes too big for their stomach threatens to tank it.</p><p>Andy looks at her over a body, a girl, army fatigues the same colour as the sand.</p><p>"You okay?"</p><p>And Nile says, "yeah," because she is, because she's outside it, now, and death is just another day.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>It’s good, when Andy hits her in the shoulder, in the gut, her reflexes just as sharp as ever. Nile’s the newest recruit, and that means most recently trained. That means most up to date with the military combat protocol.</p><p>That means there's something to learn from the quickness to her punches, the way she draws her weapon, the way she uses her body, fast, hard, instinct before reason. Nile's body becomes a lecture, Andy the most voracious student. Every move Nile makes she matches, a pas de deux of violence, Nile careful not to do more than bruise.</p><p>"Stop holding back," Andy hisses, her shoulder connecting hard enough with Nile's kneecap to dislocate it, pain shattering through.</p><p>"Fuck," she crumples down around the pain, curling, rolling back on her shoulder and kicking out with the good leg, catching Andy on the jaw. "This isn't a battle royale, we're sparring."</p><p>"If it were Joe," Andy says, wiping the blood from her lip. "You'd be going harder."</p><p>Andy catches her foot before she can recoil, holds it, slams her back into the floor.</p><p>"You're not Joe," Nile says, her neck cracking hard against the wood floor, elbows already scuttling backward. Andy's hand tightens around her, and Nile can't shake her off, not when she yanks back, almost definitely dislocating her shoulder, just to get Nile underneath her.</p><p>"I've been killing things longer than your God has been worshipped," Andy tells her, leaning down, holding the cross between her careful fingers.</p><p>Nile looks up at her, breath shallow, bodies close. "And now you can be killed."</p><p>Andy lowers herself down, straddling Nile's hips, pulling her closer by the chain, her fist around the crucifix. "When I was a God, the Nile was just a river I washed my hands in."</p><p>She doesn't let herself smile. "And now I wash your wounds." She can feel it, from the proximity, Andy's shirt brushing against her chest, both of them breathing hard. "Wasn't that someone's religion once, too? The snake eating its own tail?"</p><p>Andy's smile is absolutely vicious. "Oh, fuck you," she says, and kisses Nile so hard it's like they're fighting again, teeth clicking, the bruising force of Andy surging against her, pinning her back against the floor. Andy kisses her like she's kissed a thousand warriors, like bloodsport, like promise. Like a god might, the divine knowledge of <em> to fuck and fight </em> curled around her wicked tongue.</p><p>Nile kisses back like her name, a force of nature, one letter away from victory.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>They fuck in the sparring room, the weapons room, on the floor beside the bunks.</p><p>Nicky finds them pressed up against the dining room table, the bruise on Nile's throat already melting away when Andy pulls her mouth away from her neck.</p><p>"Did you want something?" She asks, and he points to the fresh ciabatta Joe had run out for that morning, the crumpled paper bag about two inches to the left from where Nile's ass is planted on the table, Andy's body pressed tight up between her spread legs.</p><p>Nile drops her head onto Andy's shoulder so no one can see her blush, and Andy just hands over the bag and kisses her again.</p><p>"Don't worry about him," she says, against Nile's mouth. "When those two found each other I caught them fucking in every room I walked into for a goddamn decade. I saw Joe between his thighs whilst I did laundry last week."</p><p>"We invited you," Nicky says. "Which is more than you've done."</p><p>Andy growls something that sounds like <em> scram </em>, but all Nile can hear is the sound of his laughter, bright even in retreat. </p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>"She doesn't do this, you know." Joe is leaning against the refrigerator, the sleek silver one Copley outfitted them with, a far cry from the grimy thing Andy had been storing beer and cheap cheeses in at the old church, or the burnt out thing they'd been using in the bunker.</p><p>"I'm too focused on shifting into soup mode to follow a riddle," she tells him, nudging him off the fridge with her hip so she can get to the vegetables.</p><p>She hasn't been able to cook like this in months, a year, maybe. She knows from watching them, sharing whatever delicacy one of them has fixated upon, savouring the delight they take in the taste and texture, food is a love language no matter when you're from, no matter how long you've been kicking around. Still, nothing has ever quite filled the same space, the gap between her belly and heart of her mom's lamb stew, and she's been aching to taste something like home for a while. An offering from her old world, into the new one.</p><p>Joe laughs and passes her a garlic bulb. "Andy," he says, picking up a knife and dicing the carrots. "She'll go home with someone in a bar if they're the right kind of surly, but she doesn't keep them. This is either the start of a beautiful something or the end of the fucking world."</p><p>"She's never had someone she knew was gonna stick around before," Nile says, and ignores the tug in her ribcage, the constriction, like suffocation that pulses around her lungs. "No one to keep her well fed, either." She says, taking the cleaver to the meat, big hearty chunks, enough to keep them all happy. "The woman is all bone and sinew."</p><p>Joe makes a soft sound at the back of his throat and throws the carrots into the pot. He whistles <em> don't they know it's the end of the world </em>, lowly, as he starts peeling the mushrooms.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>Andy bites back a harsh sound, something like a scream, but clipped at the edges as Nile seeps the spare bandage in vodka and swipes it over the wound.</p><p>"They're getting closer to the ribs," she says, her voice tight. "You're getting sloppy, old woman."</p><p>Andy digs her fingernails hard enough into Nile's hand she's concerned she might start bleeding. "Maybe I'm too sentimental," she says, tears pricking, her eyes screwed shut. "You're making me soft."</p><p>Nile presses hard around the tender flesh as she wraps her up in the bandage. "Go fuck yourself," she tells her, kissing her temple when Andy starts to wince.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>i'm on tumblr! <a href="http://www.bohemicns.tumblr.com">@bohemicns</a>, let's chat!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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